


For The Less Travelled Way

by sage_theory (papersage)



Category: Doctor Who, Eureka
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-30
Updated: 2010-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-06 20:12:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papersage/pseuds/sage_theory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor stops by for Eureka's disaster du jour and finds something and someone he did not expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For The Less Travelled Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Szeretni](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Szeretni).



_"One thing I'll say for the less travelled way  
Doesn't have the subtlety  
Has twice the gravity...  
Charge through the past and the future of now  
Come to it sparingly  
With what you are carrying  
Notes on the pages and notes in the bars  
And chasing without it scars  
It might make you see the stars  
Show me and told me, then show me to bed"_  
\- Great Lake Swimmers  
"Passenger Song"  
Onigara

 

In a town full of some of the best scientific and intellectual minds on Earth, you'd think the Doctor would be in a tizzy, trading witty banter with them. He did, after all, practically do a dance of joy when he realized where he'd landed.

Eureka. Where it all begins. Mankind's ascent into the heavens, their evolution into something better, brighter. All the greatest inventions have their roots, either theoretical or practical, in this little town. This brilliant little experiment - a green, geeky oasis in the middle of a nation that doesn't yet know hope is around the corner, that doesn't know that it's only a minute 'til morning.

Lightspeed travel, the cure for cancer, internal cellphones, the end of reality TV. It all starts here.

But what catches the Doctor's eye, after they put down the unfortunately mutated earthworms that were meant to purify and fertilize soil, is not the head of Stark Industries, a woman who will become known as the female Einstein in her time. It is most certainly not the eager, but mishap prone Fargo, who also stands to become a far greater man than he seems now.

Though it's also proof that history often takes the edge off. The Doctor wonders what people would think if they knew that *this* man was the great Fargo.

It is not even Henry Deacon, who will become a hero as well as the greatest thinker of his age, who fascinates him most. Though, the Doctor wouldn't mind spending a day or fifty bouncing ideas off of Henry Deacon, just to see what he'd think.

None of these are what pull the Doctor's eye across the destroyed remnants of a city street.

Instead, the Doctor is mesmerized by the sheriff, who has just kissed his daughter carefully - as he's covered in mud - and limped off with a sigh into his jeep. It is something in his tired eyes and slowly fading smile that the Doctor can't stop staring at. The Doctor doesn't know his name. He is not one of the Eureka residence that history remembers, though given his bravery, the Doctor can't help but think of that as a big mistake.

Still, with the crisis averted, the Doctor can practically see a sign saying, "TIME TO GO" - but he thinks perhaps it might be worth it to spend a few hours more.

The sheriff, cleaned up and in civilian clothes, can be found at a charming little place called Cafe Diem that is legendary in that it can prepare anything. Well, almost anything. Even this place doesn't have baked spiny krakken on toast. They do have smashing, toast though, and even more smashing jam.

He does not sit down. He waits for the cafe's owner, Vincent, to come to him.

"What can I get for you?" asks Vincent.

"Nothing. Just wanted to make sure that Zoe's birthday cake is all ready to go for tomorrow," he says, quietly, drumming his fingers on the counter.

Vincent almost squeals with delight. "Of course, sheriff. This cake is...well, it's more than a cake. It's a culinary masterpiece and a visual delight."

The gentle huff and smile is the sheriff's version of a laugh. "Just as long as it's also a cake."

"Oh, believe me, it will be," Vincent promises, "Oh, I have to run."

The sheriff sighs and turns, moving slowly and with a bit of a limp still in his step.

"Leg still hurting?" asks the Doctor, pointing to his leg, with a slyly casual look in his eyes.

"Just need to walk it off," the sheriff replies, and gives the Doctor a confused look. "I haven't seen you in town before. I usually know everybody. I'm Sheriff Jack Carter."

The Doctor rises from his seat and gives Carter his hand to shake.

"I'm the Doctor," he says, smiling.

"Doctor who? Sorry, I didn't catch your name back there because, you know, earthworms."

The Doctor's eyes twinkle like the last stars in the sky when he says, "Oh, just the Doctor."

"Thanks for the help, by the way. You here on business, doctor?"

"Just passing through," the Doctor replies.

This seems to strike Carter as strange and he gives the Doctor a much more suspicious look. "We don't get a lot of travelers around here."

The Doctor just grins. "Well, that's me. I tend to end up in rather unusual places. It's rather a gift of mine."

"You've got kind of an accent there, doctor. Where are you from?"

"Oh, here and there. It's getting rather dark out, sheriff. What do you say you walk me to my ride and you can tell me what exactly all that fuss with the earthworms was about earlier today?"

Carter looks even more suspicious, and he turns behind him to examine the darkness falling over Eureka, purple and black as bruises. Then he turns his eyes to the Doctor, evaluating every detail with the eye of a man who's seen enough to know that he can always be surprised.

The Doctor can tell that Carter does not trust the cheerful, sleek exterior the Doctor has put on. He can tell that the long brown coat and the black glasses and the brown suit and tie have not won over Sheriff Jack Carter one little bit. The Doctor can feel his mind searching for clues, indications of the truth. What is he? What is the secret that he keeps coiled close, the one that he keeps so deeply and truly that it becomes obvious that he is nothing but secrets.

"Why not?" Carter says, but not in a tone of voice that makes the Doctor glad. In fact, it makes him frown, because there is resignation, defeat, surrender in his tone. Carter does not believe the Doctor is safe, and has not found what he's sought - indeed, Carter well expects danger from this slender little man with the English accent, but he does not fight it. "I could use the walk."

_If it happens, it happens_, Carter's mind whispers, when the Doctor dares to peak. _Maybe it's time._

The Doctor can tell that Carter would not accept comfort if offered, so resumes smiling and follows Carter out of Cafe Diem.

"I gather that there was a spill of growth hormone responsible for today's little...oh, fiasco. Fiasco? No, debacle, maybe? Misadventure? Mayhap?"

"I think fiasco's fine," Carter says, giving an involuntary smile that the Doctor basks in as they walk along the sidewalk, so close that their sleeves might brush if he leaned only a little. "Yeah, Fargo was trying to win the annual garden fair, and somehow he didn't realize that putting genetically engineered earthworms in his garden and then spritzing them with growth hormone might be a bad idea."

"A garden fair, really? So he wasn't purposely trying to do that with the earthworms?"

"Nope," Carter confirms. His smile becomes jittery, his limp more pronounced. "He just wanted really *really* big tomatoes."

"Well, I suppose you can't blame a man for wanting fresh produce."

"True, but I generally like fruit that I can hold."

"Come again?"

"Fargo was trying to grow a tomato the size of a shetland pony. Last year's prize tomato was ninety-five pounds and four ounces."

The Doctor whistles. "That's rather a lot of BLT's, isn't it? You could feed half the population of Djibouti. Well, not half. Maybe a quarter. An eighth, perhaps."

Carter can help but laugh even as he reaches down to massage his hip where it hurts. "That's Eureka for you."

"Brilliant, isn't it?"

"If you say so," Carter mumbles, rubbing his hip a little harder.

"I get the feeling that perhaps you're not so taken with it."

"No, no. I love it here. My daughter's happy, doing well. I've got a great job, friends. What's not to love?"

"Obviously something."

Carter looks around. "How far is your car?"

"Oh, just over this hill," the Doctor promises. "Do you need to stop?"

"I'm good."

"You'd think in a place like this they'd have something that could fix that in a snap," the Doctor remarks, knowing full well they do. It's another worrying moment, something to give him pause about Sheriff Jack Carter. Surely someone would be able to mend what's probably a strained muscle or a slightly overextended ligament.

But Carter hasn't sought treatment. In the Doctor's professional opinion, there's something important and rather disturbing about the fact that in a town so full of options, he won't take any.

"It's nothing to get excited over. Just put some ice on it, it'll be fine," Carter replies.

"Seems a shame not to take advantage of the technology if you've got it," the Doctor leads him on, glancing sideways just briefly to judge Carter's reaction.

"Technology's not always *that* helpful. Trust me, I know."

"So that's what this is about," the Doctor says.

"What's what about?" Carter asks. "It doesn't mean anything, except that sometimes, technology...isn't everything people think it is. Science has a time and a place, but you can't just analyze everything and stuff it into a test tube and synthesize it. I mean, what's wrong with tomatoes, huh? They were just fine the way they were. They were red and juicy and they were just _fine._ But no, then somebody's got to come along with some kind of *upgrade* and the next thing you know there are mutant Earthworms about to eat your best friend's face off, all because everyone has to keep pushing things just that one step further."

The Doctor nods. "Must be very frustrating for the regular old tomatoes."

"Yes, it is!" Carter explodes, gesturing and bending over, holding his hip. "Not all of us can be ninety pound tomatoes. Some of us are just those little grape ones you get in the carton, and we can't be that. We're not just here to be thrown in a salad every once and a while. Maybe the little tomatoes want to do something, too. Maybe we want a part of the future to call *our* own."

The Doctor stops and turns. "I don't think we're talking about tomatoes anymore."

"No, we're not. God, I shouldn't be saying this to you. I don't even know you."

"Oh, come on. We fought earthworms together. We're practically family! Second cousins, really. Maybe second cousins twice removed." The Doctor stops himself when he realizes Jack is just staring. "I'm told that once I stop jabbering on, I'm actually a very good listener."

Carter's mouth surrenders another lovely, weather-worn grin. History is remiss not to save that smile, the Doctor thinks. It is such a quietly brilliant thing all on its own. "It's just - this place is all about the future. This is what towns are going to look like twenty, thirty years from now. All I see are scientists and geniuses. But what about people like me? And Zoe? I mean, she's a smart kid, but she's not a rocket scientist. Where's her place when everybody's got SARA in their house and there's mutant earthworms and giant tomatoes? What happens to the normal guys like me?"

"Oh, Jack," the Doctor says, and the smile he feels is deep down to his core, to the vortex of his being where time and space meet inside him, where keeps memory and feeling, and a sudden, intense love of Jack Carter. "Believe me, there's definitely a place for you in the future."

He wants to tell Jack Carter, in that moment, about a temp named Donna who saved the Ood and stopped a war because she was a bloody genius when it came to filing. He wants to let Jack know all about a shopgirl named Rose who stopped the Daleks with nothing more than her boyfriend's tow truck and a tenacity that bulldogs would envy.

The Doctor knows that he can't, that there is not enough time here in the ever darkening blue twilight of Eureka to tell Carter of these things, of the ordinary people across the stars who become great not because they're geniuses, or because they've got superpowers, or they're wealthy or beautiful. He wishes he could make Sheriff Jack Carter know of all the people who he holds so dear in those explosive, gorgeous moments because they *tried*, because they were brave, because they loved.

If he could make Carter understand that it does matter if history cannot hold onto his name or that heart-breaking smile, because the future is not built on science or technology, but on tenacity. On people like him who fight the earthworms and eat birthday cakes and *live*.

Words fail the Doctor, for all his eloquence. All he can do is reach out for Carter and kiss him fast and long against the lips, press his body into him and exude his need, exerting the dominance of his sublime affection into the very pores of Carter's skin.

Carter electrifies under the Doctor's touch, his mind swirls, descends into weightless free fall all while they stand still.

The Doctor pulls away, because it is time. Because the night has come in earnest, and even this beautiful moment must be released into the wind to die. Everything has to.

He can touch Carter, and Donna, and Rose. He can touch the sheriffs and the shopgirls, but never can he hold them. They are ordinary as sand and slip through his fingers twice as easily.

Oh, he would stay there with Carter if he could, if he could strip himself of the facets of time, of his knowledge, of the things that pull him against gravity and speed and attachment. He would stay in this beautiful town, with these tenacious, intelligent people who believe in something, who try and keep trying even when there are earthworms and grief to be had for their troubles.

"I've never - I'm not supposed to -" Carter stammers, but he does not step away. He threads his hands through the Doctor's hair, presses his face against the Doctor's neck. "I don't know if I can."

"Oh, you can, Jack Carter, you really can," the Doctor whispers, into his ear, and holds Carter so very close for that moment. It hurts to love so much. It hurts to see the truth and find beauty there, beauty beyond reckoning or replication. Never again in all time and space will there be this man. Stars will come and go, the nebulae will explode and reform and explode again. Planets come to dust and their dust makes more planets. All things are cyclical, except for them. These people, these ordinary, gorgeous, unrepeatable beings. Infinite in their number, and singular in their individuality.

Carter knows where to lead him, behind a little flower shop where the flowers grow out of season, always, and are brighter, purer, healthier than flowers should be. The roses there never fade, and the thought of that pains the Doctor into remembering the circumstances of what he's about to do.

But even that pain is not enough to restrain him. Carter rests on a bench behind the closed shop and the Doctor drops to his knees, pulling the belt out of its loops and working Carter's pants down until they're past his knees. The smell of musk and skin and sweat cloud the air that the Doctor inhales when he takes Carter's cock into his mouth.

Carter moans, throws his head side to side like a wild horse resisting a bridle, his hips raise and the Doctor accommodates the length of him in his throat. Carter gasps, "Oh god, I can't, I can't. Doctor, I - oh, Doctor," he pleads, denying and confirming all at once. "Can't, please, I can't anymore, I can't, please - I need - oh God!"

The Doctor feels Carter come in his throat, riding out the orgasm as though the pleasure makes him miserable. The Doctor holds his bruised hip down and waits until Carter's muscles ease before pulling away.

Before the Doctor can even properly wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, Carter has slid off the bench and kneeled in front of it as though it were an altar. He holds on to the wooden slats of the bench and the Doctor can put up no resistance to the sight of him willing and panting and holding on but smiling and chuckling a breathy, punchy, frazzled laugh.

Pulling his own pants down the Doctor kneels behind Carter and frantically searches his pockets for lubricant and finds some - courtesy of another Jack he also can't touch again. Carter is so tight that the Doctor barely gets the first finger in before he bucks, moans.

The second finger comes easier, with the Doctor softly rubbing the dry, warm skin of Carter's back, listening to him contain himself through grunts, hard inhales. The third is another challenge, but it's enough. He doesn't even have to hesitate, he was half hard sucking Jack off and now he's all the way there. The Doctor pushes in only a little against the tight resistance, pauses, and slides the rest of his length in slowly.

Only once will he touch Jack Carter, and though he would sell souls and worlds and memories to touch more and deeper and longer, he can't. It's already slid through his fingers. He can't stay any longer than this.

Whatever this becomes, whatever he feels now, it's all there is. Only this moment, only who they are. They are heaven and earth, they are the dark and the light, black holes and supernovas. Life and death. Being and unbeing.

"Oh, Jack Carter, you really don't know," the Doctor prophesies, in a deeper, scarier voice than he's used before, but he can't help it. The pleasure of this, and the pain of knowing it's ending even as it begins, has darkened him. He cannot find his way to a lie, there is only the truth now. "You won't," he gasps, gives a hard thrust and stops. Jack is so tight, so beautiful, all lean muscles and the ache of love and wanting so, so much to do right. The Doctor remember right, remembers goodness when he touches Jack. This will be over in time, but not yet. "You don't know how beautiful you are. There's nothing to be afraid of, Jack Carter. You have a place, you have this, you have *now*."

The Doctor knows the past, the present, the future. He knows becoming and undoing, he knows beginning and end - it is too much. All of this man, in one moment, in one unspeakably magnificent, silent moment, it's too much.

With a scream he does not voice, but a viciously pained look on his face nonetheless, the Doctor comes inside of Carter and rests against his back. The Doctor rests against Carter for just a moment, listening to him breathe, listening to his single, brave little heart.

Oh, these humans. That one heart, so prone to failure. It's such a risk being them. Just getting up in the morning, knowing there are a million things out there that could break a heart or stop it cold, and they've only got one. But they risk it nonetheless. They venture, they try, they explore. Sometimes they just hold on for dear life to the wooden planks of a bench behind a shop, but always they take the risk.

The Doctor could never do that. He envies them for it, and pities them. There's pressure and pleasure just as he thinks of how much they break him into pieces each time, and he falls headlong into an orgasm. So intense and animal and basic and human - making all the thinking stop, all the metaphors. He pours himself out into Jack, empty and just _existing_. For once, time becomes small enough to hold. Time is only this, only now. He breathes, he relaxes.

Slowly, the Doctor slides out and tucks himself back in. He can feel it all coming back as the woozy haze of orgasm wears off. Carter is still holding tight to the bench by the time the Doctor has stood up. He wobbles and picks himself up, his legs looking momentarily useless, just enough to sit on the bench again and pull his pants up.

He covers his face. "Oh god. I've never done that before. I don't know what -"

"Hormones. Pheremones. Historical happenstance," the Doctor explains for him, shrugging.

"My daughter's over at a friends. If you wanted, you could come back to my place," Carter offers, buttoning his khakis with a groan and forcing himself to stand up.

"I'm afraid I can't, there's my ride," the Doctor says, and points to the TARDIS, standing at the edge of the flower shop parking lot.

Carter blinks. "You do know that's a phone booth, right?"

"It has occurred to me," the Doctor replies, sticking his hands in his pocket. "Come on, I'll show you something."

Carter follows behind, his limp gone and his face displaying a rattled, but irrepressible smile. That's what the Doctor wants to see.

With another kiss that sears through him like flame, but leaves frostbite in his soul, the Doctor enters the TARDIS.

"Okay, Doc, whaddya wanna show me?" Carter asks, just staring at the front of the TARDIS.

"Keep watching!" the Doctor shouts through the door. He forgets, for a moment, about the pain and is swept up in a tide of eagerness, the kind that comes by instinct when he spots the controls and knows it's time to pick up and leave again, to find some other place, some other beauty.

The Doctor cranks the TARDIS up, winding it hard, hoping to throw himself far, far away from Eureka, from the 21st century, from the smell of Carter and sex and hope and ordinary brilliance.

The TARDIS roars, whines, sighs into the places between time and space, whipping up wind. The Doctor watches Carter covering his face from the whirlwind as he disappears.

"Just keep watching, Sheriff Jack Carter," the Doctor says, with a dolorous smile across his face. It hurts more than he expected it to, even for such a short amount of time that he spent. All partings take some little piece of him away. He's left himself across the universe.

Perhaps, one day, all these people and all these places will find themselves together, with all the little crumbs and dust and remnants of the Doctor. Maybe they'll join up, and find a way to put him back together again.

\- END -


End file.
